


Girls' Night

by Stardust_and_Strawberries



Series: The Fosterson Files [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: All the guys need a hug, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awesome Jane Foster, BAMF Betty Ross, BAMF Darcy Lewis, BAMF Jane Foster, BAMF Pepper Potts, Bonding, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Avengers, Drunkenness, Even hungover Pepper Potts can kick ass, F/M, Female Friendship, Ian needs a hug, Justin Hammer is a dick, Recreational Drug Use, Science, Science Sisters, Sif is a good bro, Sif is not a bitch, Swearing, Thor Is Not Stupid, Thor Needs a Hug, he's just very much in love which is sometimes similar, no sex but discussion of sex, the ladies have got this covered
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 06:56:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1678934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stardust_and_Strawberries/pseuds/Stardust_and_Strawberries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Thor in Asgard and the other Avengers away on a mission, Darcy, Betty, Pepper and Jane decide to have a girls' night. A certain supervillain has other plans, but it's nothing they can't handle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set sometime in the future when everyone's living in Avengers Tower and all's well with SHEILD, so probably cannon divergence. Also I love sixbeforelunch's [headcanon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/907894) that Betty rebelled against her military brat upbringing by becoming an anticapitalist, antimilitary radical before she discovered biochemistry, so that's the Betty I'm writing here.

"You've remembered everything?"

"Chocolate for Sif, the next volume of the exploits of the mage Potter for Volstagg's children..."

"...bring Tony back another uru sample..."

"...and 'The Epic of the Sorcerer Smith' for you. You are certain that you also desire the Commentaries?" asked Thor. "In truth they are more concerned with the feasting and drinking that celebrated the BiFrost's completion than with its construction."

Jane nodded. "You never know, there might be something useful in there."

He smiled, teasing. "And what would you bring me back from the conference?"

"That depends how much you like branded stationery and mugs."

"Jane, you will not consider spending the weekend with me on Asgard? Heimdall would have you back in good time on Monday."

"I'd love to but I'm the keynote speaker, I can't just waltz in there unprepared and I've been so busy getting the lab back in order after Tony's last little experiment." They both winced at the memory. "Anyway you need to prepare too for this round of negotiations, you can't just spend the whole weekend trying to get me back into bed."

"Merely trying?"

"Okay, succeeding" she grinned. "Off with you then, I'll see you next week."

"Farewell Jane, and I wish you good fortune at your conference."

They kissed, rather more chastely than she would have liked but she know Pepper was watching to see how much the BiFrost opening would mess up her helipad this time. Then Jane stepped back as the rainbow light took him and went inside, to her lab and her notes and her barest skeleton of a slideshow.

***

Jane had always hated conferences even as a grad student. Not the talks, she loved the opportunity to find out what the rest of the field was up to, and not the chance to talk to people about their work, but the enforced mingling afterwards, making awkward smalltalk over fiddly food on sticks. So for once she was glad when her phone rang with the awful ringtone that she still hadn't managed to change.

"Hey!" said Darcy. "So this giant mutated mechanical squid thing turned up off Bermuda and Natasha and the boys have gone to avenge at it, so Betty and I were thinking girls' night!"

"Huh? Squid?" said Jane, her head still full of stars.

Darcy sighed. "We're gonna get baked, paint our nails and watch The Princess Bride. Wanna come?"

"I can't Darce, I have to stay here at this drinks reception. I'm keynote speaker, I can't just disappear."

"Says who? Didn't you have that big conference dinner and give a speech last night? Surely you've done your duty by now."

Jane popped her head out of the alcove and scanned the room. No one seemed to be actively searching for her but..."I really shouldn't Darcy."

"Are you enjoying yourself there Jane? Honestly? How often do we get the tower to ourselves? Pepper's coming."

Jane played her trump card. "What about Ian? You can't bring him to a girls' night!"

"He'll be fine playing games or something, he's been lusting over all Tony's consoles since he got here."

"The guy came all the way from Britain to see you Darcy, you can't just stick him in the common room with an Xbox!"

"He'll be fine. Too much enforced togetherness is bad for a relationship anyway. Are you out of excuses yet?"

Jane groaned. "Fine. I'll be back about six thirty."

***

"So I've basically just accepted that I live with crazy people. Remember that day last week when the whole tower smelled of burnt plastic?" Darcy was holding court from her perch on the back of the couch. The others nodded.

"It wasn't actually Jane or Tony that time. I came down to breakfast and Natasha was standing on Thor's shoulder like the world's deadliest parrot pulling an arrow out of the smoke detector. And the only thing I bothered asking was how Clint had set fire to the coffee maker - not why you'd bring a bow to breakfast or if Thor minded being used as a stepladder while he was trying to eat his eggs, none of that occurred to me till later. Crazy people."

"How did he manage to set fire to the coffee maker, exactly?" asked Pepper in horrified fascination.

"No idea. He just said 'I have a very specific skillset' and then Natasha threw a bagel at him."

They had started the night in Betty's apartment but finished her only two bottles of wine very quickly and Jane had then been foolish enough to mention that she had mead. As neither Betty or Pepper had ever tried mead before the party quickly moved down the corridor, leaving Jane desperately hoping that Pepper wouldn't notice one corner of what was after all technically her couch was supported by a pile of books (she and Thor having gotten rather, ahem, enthusiastic and broken the leg off).

"I'd have thought you'd have had practice with that." Betty smirked at Jane, who decided to learn from Natasha's example and threw a chip at her.

"Don't gets me wrong, Jane is basically a machine for turning coffee into science and thinks breakfast cereal for every meal is a healthy balanced diet, but at least with her I know things are only going to explode in the lab. Did I ever tell you about the time Steve and Thor tried to roast a chicken in the microwave?"

"It wasn't his fault, they don't have microwaves on Asgard!" Darcy loved how fiercely Jane, all five foot three and ninety pounds when wet of her, always defended her enormous, super-strong weather god boyfriend.

"And yet amazingly, these are the people tasked with saving the world and we're all still here." Betty poured the last of the mead. Most of it landed in her glass.

"Believe me, I try to make sense of that every day." nodded Pepper. "Bruce is pretty competent though." she added, mead, carbs and Betty's slightly suspicious brownies having put her in a generous frame of mind. God she hoped Steve never found out about the brownies.

"Do you ever feel like the wrong people are in charge of that? Like you..." Darcy jabbed a breadstick at Betty "are clearly smarter than Bruce because you've never actually experimented on yourself and Jane's easily as smart as Tony and Pepper's obviously smarter than Tony because this tower's still standing."

"I think you forgot the superpowers thing." said Betty, grinning. Darcy waved her hand dismissively.

"Half of them don't have them, and I had to teach two of the ones that do how to use pump soap."

"How about you, what's your superpower?" asked Pepper, playing along.

"Fabulous boobs. What? That's totally a superpower. Also I taser gods. Well one god. Is there any more of that mead Jane?"

"All gone, sorry. There's ale or vodka or some sort of instant daiquiri mix that's kinda horrible."

"You don't need superpowers if you've got a suit. And a death wish." mused Pepper.

Darcy rummaged on the coffee table for her glass, gave up and started swigging the daiquiri straight from the bottle. "Jane's got a suit." she offered, to the astonishment of both Betty and Pepper.

"You've got a suit? How did you get a suit?!"

"I told Tony I'd recalibrate his phase-amplifier for him. Umm, I may have made sure his phase-amplifier needed recalibrating first. Look it's not a proper suit okay, it's just a lightweight prototype he didn't need because it wasn't tough enough, repulsors and pretty much nothing else."

"Why do you have a suit?!"

"It was just an idea I had. So I can't open a bridge between realms yet but I can teleport things a short distance. And I thought, well, for the moment I can use that - if I put the machinery into a suit I could make something that could teleport people. But it doesn't work because I can't get the superconductor coils small enough - basically the amount of power it would take to just carry the thing would be more than the suit could supply."

"She tried everything to minaturise it." Darcy butted in. "Like, everything in her lab and half the stuff in Tony's lab. She didn't sleep for nearly three days. I was this close to just getting Thor to come and squash the thing with Miaow Maiow, just to make sure she didn't work herself to death."

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?" shrieked Jane.

"Chill, chill, it was a joke, you know I'd never do that and Thor would never break your stuff." Not on purpose anyway, there had been the unfortunate incident when a distracted Jane had said "Pass me that please?" and gestured at her screwdriver set, and Thor hadn't noticed it and had brought her the half ton electromagnet it was resting on. It had taken her a week to wire it back in. Thor was now almost too scared to enter her lab.

"No, oh my god Mjolnir! Uru! Tony has some filaments! It's a variable density room temperature superconductor! Darcy I could kiss you!" She raced toward the door and promptly tripped over a magazine rack.

"Hey. HEY!" shouted Betty. "Friends don't let friends do science drunk remember? The lab will still be there in the morning and there'll be a much lower chance of you soldering your hand to the suit or something."

"Don't make me sit on you, because I will!" added Darcy. A reluctant Jane stumbled back to her chair.

"So Jane just invented a teleportation suit. I need another drink. Pass that over." said Pepper. Darcy obligingly handed her the bottle and Betty shouted "Noooooo!" and leapt across the table. It would have looked a lot more impressive if she hadn't caught her foot in a bowl of salsa and gone sprawling onto Pepper, knocking the bottle out of her hand onto the couch.

"The fuck?"gasped Darcy.

"Strawberries." explained Betty, rolling off Pepper. "She's allergic."

Darcy grinned. "See, we're totally superheroes! You just saved Pepper's life."

"I saved her from a nasty case of hives." Betty was trying to pick jalapeños out of her sock.

"Thank you Betty." Pepper had somehow maintained her dignity through the whole incident. "Sorry about the couch Jane."

"That's OK, it's had worse." Jane said magnanimously. She'd just worked out how to make the teleportation suit work, who cared about a couch? Pepper shot her a look usually reserved for Tony.

"If I've spent the night sitting in alien spunk I really don't want to know about it thank you." There was a shocked intake of breathe from Jane and a horrified giggle from Darcy. Betty just sniggered. "What? You think I'd have survived this long with Tony if I was a prude?"

Darcy was still giggling and muttering "Alien spunk!" to herself as Jane turned bright red. Pepper frowned.

"It wasn't that funny. It wasn't was it? Am I missing something here? This must be how Steve feels all the time."

"I think the brownies may have caught up with her." said Betty, as Darcy fell off the back of the couch, still giggling. There was a crash and the couch tilted through thirty degrees.

"You okay down there?" shouted Jane. Darcy laughed even harder.

"Your apartment's full of swords! You've got swords everywhere!"

"Yeah, Thor trains with them sometimes, I don't know why, he only ever fights with Mjolnir and they just clutter up the place. What's up with them?"

"Your apartment's full of swords and I just cut myself! On a fucking table lamp!" She held her hand up to demonstrate, still lying on her back surrounded by astrophysics textbooks.

"I've got some serum down in the lab that might accelerate healing." offered Betty.

Pepper stood up, took in the broken couch, the disaster on the table and the salsa footprints around it. "Okay ladies, I think if people are seriously considering testing something out of Betty's lab on themselves it's time to to call it a night."


	2. Chapter 2

June woke up and wished she hadn't. Groaning she rolled over to put her arm around Thor, who felt oddly thin...

"You know technically you're still my boss. I could sue you for sexual harassment."

"Darcy? Why are you in my bed? And how are you so chirpy this morning?" A horrible thought occurred to her. "You didn't let Betty use any of that stuff on you did you?"

"God no, green's really not my color. I just have more practice than you. We didn't all spend Friday nights at university crunching data you know." She stood up shakily and Jane saw she didn't look nearly as together as she sounded. "I wouldn't say no to some aspirin though."

"In the bathroom, cupboard beside the sink, second shelf behind the healing stones."

"Healing stones?" came a voice from the bathroom, suddenly curious.

"No Darce, put them back, they're for really serious injuries like stab wounds or something, you can't just use them for a hangover. Darcy! I'm pretty sure only Asgardians are strong enough to crumble them anyway."

"No they're not, look, I can flake bits off with my fingernail." She rubbed the gritty powder onto her forehead. "Oh my God that is awesome!"

"Okay so you don't trust my formula but alien magic's cool?" grumbled Betty, appearing in the doorway and slumping on the doorframe. 

"Betty you have to try this, it's incredible!" Darcy bounced over to her, actually bounced. Jane felt she really should do something about the situation but movement felt unwise at present.

"That really is...it can't be the placebo effect can it? No it's not is it...Jane can I have some of these to analyze?"

"No. Why are you all still in my apartment anyway? Is Pepper still here?"

"No she left half an hour ago. We are quite sure she's human right? Because she was wrecked last night but she's just breezed off for a teleconference with the Tokyo legal department. I'm not sure why I'm here, I woke up on your rug. It's a nice rug by the way, where's it from?"

"Vanaheim I think."

Betty looked disappointed. "I was hoping for IKEA or something, but okay. I'm surprised you're still here, I thought you'd been in the lab already torturing the laws of physics with those uru filaments."

"I don't think I can face moving quite yet."

"Okay wow, you must have it bad. Sure you don't want this?" She held out the now considerably smaller healing stone.

"No, really no."

"Who wants coffee?" called Darcy from the kitchen. "Try not to look at the front room too much when you come through Jane, we'll get the cleaner bots in and it'll all be sorted out in no time, just keep your eyes on the kitchen. In fact nevermind, stay there and I'll bring it through."

Staying there sounded very good to Jane at the moment. Coffee sounded even better. She watched Darcy maneuver the tray past Betty through half-closed eyelids  and reached for a mug like a drowning man grasping for a rope.

"Darcy you're an angel, you have no idea how much I needed that."

"That's because you're a lightweight sweetie." said Darcy, patting her gently on the head, and Jane realized what a bad state she must be in because on the third pat the lights went out. It took her a moment to realize that this hadn't just happened inside her head, by which time the other women were calling for JARVIS. It was only a few seconds before the lights came back on and he answered, but it felt like much longer.

"I apologize for the inconvenience. An electromagnetic pulse has detonated about the tower, which disrupted power relays from the arc reactor and triggers the deployment of the blast shield. I have now restored power to the inside of the tower but do not yet think it prudent to open the shields."

"Where's Pepper?" "Is Ian okay?" "What happened?" they all asked at the same time. In response Pepper appeared on the bedroom computer looking astonishingly good for someone whose teleconference had been interrupted by an emp while she was hungover.

"Mr Boothby is currently asleep after playing Call of Duty until four twenty eight am." Darcy grinned. "Unfortunately the emp damaged my external sensors and data connections, and at present I am unable to determine its origin."

"But this is Avengers Tower! The power can't go off in Avengers Tower!" protested Darcy. On screen Pepper shot her a Look.

"Darcy, the one small mercy in this situation is that Tony isn't here to whinge about someone one-upping his tech. Please don't compensate for that. JARVIS, can you reach the jet?"

"Negative Ms Potts."

"How about Rhodey?"

"Again I must reply in the negative. At present I am unable to contact any networks external to the tower and it will be some time before I am able to restore the relevant systems. However I am receiving a transmission from Mr Justin Hammer."

"WHAT? What does that little sh....Okay, put him on screen." The screen divided to reveal a rather smug looking man who reminded Darcy of Gideon Graves even before he started speaking.

"Miss Potts! How nice to see you again!"

"It's Ms and what are you doing to the tower?"

"Pepper! I'm hurt, truly hurt! I know we've had our little disagreements in the past but surely we can put them behind us now? I'm a business man, you're a business woman, and I'm making you a proposal that we can work together [he tapped his fingers together to emphasize his point, making Darcy long to punch him through the screen] to resolve the little predicament you're in. Throwing around unfounded accusations like that really won't help us cooperate now will it?"

"Stick with Ms Potts please Mr Hammer, we are not on first name terms. And I find it rather suspicious that you appear to be the only person able to contact us at the moment."

"Now Pepper please, there's no need to be nasty, I do have some extremely expensive lawyers you know. Now you have a problem, and you're about to have a larger problem, and I'd be very happy to assist you with it because I do so care about women in business and I would feel bad Pepper, I would feel so bad, if anything happened to you while Tony wasn't here to look after things. Now all I need you to do is to open the blast shutters so I can send some of my drones in to protect you..."

"Mr Hammer." said Pepper. "Even if I didn't suspect you of engineering this situation for your benefit I wouldn't let anything as badly designed drones as your drones in here because they'd probably explode in my face. JARVIS, end call." 

Darcy whooped as an affronted looking Justin Hammer vanished from the screen. "Go Pepper! You told him!"  Betty just looked worried. "What do you think he meant about us being about to have a larger problem?"

Pepper nodded. "I'd rather not find out. JARVIS, is there anyone we can contact?"

"Doctor Foster might consider going out onto the terrace and calling for Heimdall."

Jane rolled off the bed groaning. "Okay fine, you win. Pass me that stone."

She was rubbing the last flakes into her forehead (and damn, it really did work, the heavy ache behind her eyeballs had just melted away) when an impact shook the tower. Something smashed in the front room, but she decided it could hardly make last night's devastation worse.

"JARVIS? What was that?"

The AI hesitated a moment answering, and when he did there was something in his voice that was almost frustration. "With the blast shutters up and my external sensors out of operation I am currently unable to determine the nature or source of the impact. However I am able to inform you that it was on laboratory level nine."

"Jane? Betty? Anything significant on nine?" asked Pepper.

Jane nodded immediately. "The Thing We Do Not Talk About."

"Whoah, hold up." said Darcy. "Superheroes, aliens, gods, that I can accept but if you're telling me Voldemort's real and we've got him in one of the labs I am going to have very serious words with somebody."

"It's the Destroyer Darce, what's left of it anyway. Pepper and I don't talk about it because Thor wants to take it back to Asgard and Tony wants to take it apart even though I've told him there's nothing mechanical in there, and they've been arguing about it ever since we got it back a fortnight ago and Pep and I have not heard the end of it from opposite teams."

Pepper nodded. "At this point I'm on Team Thor just to get it out of here and get Tony to shut up about it. Okay, I'll stay on comm but I'm going to take a suit and have a look around out there." The screen blinked off.

"Hey I didn't know Pepper could use the suits. Can we use them too?"

"Negative, Ms Lewis. While I could override the security software protocols, the suits are DNA hard-encoded to be operated only by Mr Stark, Ms Potts and Colonel Rhodes."

Betty seemed to be considering something. "Jarvis, is this enough of an emergency situation to override the door locks?"

"Affirmative Doctor Ross."

"Stay there you guys, I've got a plan." Jane watched her race for the door.

"Screw that" she muttered "Darcy, I'll get the uru, prep the suit and I'll meet you in the lab."

"What? How do I do that?"

"Just take the reindeer antlers off it!" Jane's voice echoed down the corridor.


	3. Chapter 3

The pressure where the helmet was crushing her ponytail against the base of her skull was doing nothing for her headache or her mood. She hovered twenty feet above the robotic...thing and watched as it directed the laser beam on what she could only think of as its abdomen at the tower's blast shield. Below it a second one gave up on the laser cutter and drifted away from the tower on what seemed to be repulsors, before directing a bunker-busting missile at the spot it had just abandoned. She could see at least half a dozen more, milling in the air or scuttling along the vertical surface on eight articulated tentacles, and JARVIS had just informed her that he was picking up thirty five similar energy signatures. This, she thought grimly, is why we can't rent out the lower floor office spaces.

 

"What have we got?" asked Betty's voice in her ear.

 

"Thirty five...I suppose mechanical spiders is the best description, about six foot wide and armed with lasers, missiles and what looks like cutting jaws. Only a few of them seem to be making much effort to get in for now, but if that changes we're in trouble. They don't seem to be interested in any other buildings, or in me at the moment. Probably not AI, JARVIS seems to think they follow a programmed set of behaviors. Oh and they can fly."

 

"Hammer tech?" asked Betty the cynic.

 

"Not sure, they could be but they seem a bit more graceful than his usual efforts, almost organic." She shuddered as a pair scurried past her.

 

"Okay, just keep an eye on them I guess, someone's bound to look out of the Baxter Building or turn on the news at Xavier's eventually."

 

"I don't think we have time for that Betty, they're going to get through eventually. I'm going to see what happens if I try to stop one of the ones with the lasers."

 

"That sounds like a terrible idea Pep, Tony's meant to be the one who makes bad decisions remember?"

 

Pepper ignored her. She hated violence against people, but these were machines and they were threatening _her_ friends in _her_  tower. As she drifted closer to the one trying to laser through the shields it reared in an angry, fluid motion, snapping its metal jaws at her. She knocked it off the tower with a repulsor blast, followed up with a wrist rocket before it had a chance to retaliate. The carcass shattered when it hit the terrace.

 

"Pepper?"

 

"It only reacted when I attacked it. The others are still milling around." She neglected to mention that they were now very definitely milling around her.

 

"Can you put your hands on a piece of the one you shot?" called Jane through her headset.

 

"I think...yes, I've got a piece."

 

"JARVIS, give her gauntlet spectrometers. It's not made of anything not on the regular periodic table is it?"

 

"Negative Doctor Foster, Ms Potts, it is primarily a simple tungsten/titanium alloy containing 8.624 percent by mass iron, 5.652 percent osmium, 3.163 percent..."

 

"Thank you JARVIS." said Pepper drily. "I think all we really needed to know was that it wasn't adamantium or something." Jane agreed although she would actually have liked to know a little more.

 

"Basically it means we can punch them!" called Betty over the comm and Pepper couldn't help grinning at the 'we' when she was the one outside. Her grin widened when a red and gold blur streaked across her vision and resolved into another suit as it connected fist-first with a robot. The target crumpled and tumbled out of the sky.

 

"Nice to see you Tony, punctual as ever." she teased, dodging a laser beam and ripping another robot off the tower. It writhed and managed to break free, only to be shot down by the other suit. Whose visor briefly flicked open to reveal a grinning Betty.

 

"How did you crack the DNA encoding?" Pepper gasped, catching a mechanical tendril as it tried to coil around her neck and whipping the spiderbot into one of its fellows. They exploded rather gratifyingly.

 

"I didn't, I stole your toothbrush and wiped it on the contact points. Or Tony's toothbrush, it didn't really matter."

 

"Was it green or blue?"

 

"Green."

 

"Yeah, that's Tony's. Congratulations Betty, you're trapped in a suit full of Tony's spit."

 

"Thank you so much for putting it like that."

 

"Aaaw maaaan." crackled Darcy's voice in her ear. "Couldn't you have pinched the other toothbrush for me?"

 

"Pretty sure the suits wouldn't fit a woman of your majestic proportions Darce." called Betty. "I'm finding it tight in the chest myself."

 

"Screw you shrimpy." Darcy replied cheerfully. "Gotta go now, boss lady's back."

 

***

 

Darcy had removed the Christmas antlers, bowtie and pink shutter-shades from the suit by the time Jane reached the lab and was just cleaning off the equations. (When Jane was absorbed in something she had a bad habit of scribbling notes on the nearest available surface. More often than not the nearest available surface was Thor, which was how Darcy knew that xylene was the key to removing Sharpie from armor. This had also come in useful when Clint had decided to add Tony's facial hair to all his suits.) She started picking the rainbow triangle sticker off the chestplate but Jane shook her head. "Leave that, if it does teleport it's going to be a rainbow suit, and anyway I like it there."

 

"Did you find it?"

 

"Yeah, it was on the 'clean work only' bench underneath half of Steve's bike and an open bag of cashews. I hate Tony sometimes."

 

She dumped the rune-covered box onto the workbench next to the abandoned teleporter without ceremony and flipped the lid open. Inside hundreds of gunmetal gray filaments coiled and writhed over each other, sometimes sending a questing braided strand up the sides of the box. The whole mass had a greasy, almost liquid sheen. Darcy leaned back hurriedly.

 

"Okay that is so not what I was expecting. It's kind of gross actually."

 

"It's not crude uru, that just looks like hematite but it'd be unstable because it just absorbs any raw magic floating around, we have that even here apparently, I'm still trying to pin the details down. It's been tempered with a foundation enchantment which seems to work like formatting a drive and then it's had another spell added so we can shape it. This stuff should just flow wherever we want it. We can't have the starforged stuff because apparently it'll be impervious to all our tests." As she was speaking Jane carefully lifted a strand from the box with a pair of delicate forceps. The rest of the squirming mass followed in defiance of gravity. She grinned.

 

"Is that what passes for pillow talk with you guys? Cuz if so I don't envy your sex life anymore. Wait, are you blushing? Oh my god, you totally did talk about this in bed didn't you? Jane you are such a dork!"

 

"It came up okay?"

 

"How? Does he sleep cuddling Mew Mew like a teddy bear or something?"

 

"It was his armor..."

 

"He wears armor in BED?"

 

"I was kind of wearing it." Jane muttered in a tiny voice.

 

"And again, oh my god. You were wearing his armor for sexytimes and you got distracted by what it was made of? I am so going to tease you about this forever once we're done being attacked by spider robots." 

 

Jane concentrated very hard on her work, feeling her ears turn red as she teased apart the uru filaments and positioned them on her teleporter. They flowed into the position almost as though they knew where she needed them to go, which okay was a little creepy (since when did components actually cooperate when you were assembling them?) but also kind of cool. She had assembled this thing so many times in her head with imaginary materials with the properties she needed that the actual build took only minutes, and she was soon holding the finished device in hands that shook with anticipation.

 

"And now it's small enough to fit in the chestpiece if I take the unibeam out!"

 

Darcy frowned at her. "Jane, you do know you're going into a fight, not to a science fair right? You can't just replace the weapons with cool equipment."

 

"The suit doesn't have enough power to run both the teleporter and the unibeam which means..." she yanked another clot of wires free from the cavity she was excavating "...that it'll just be so much dead weight."

 

"Okay fine, but if I catch you putting a telescope in there we're going to have words."

 

Jane tried to close up the chestplate. The teleporter didn't quite fit, but she hit it with a spanner until it did then started putting the suit on. It was a lightweight prototype, slender and fragile looking in comparison to Tony's other suits and still unpainted metal. Darcy closed her eyes and said a silent prayer, wondering why she'd never asked Thor if one of his cousins was maybe the god of stubborn scientists - she felt she could use a little divine protection right now. And then all she could see of Jane was her tiny, determined face surrounded by plates of gleaming metal and suddenly it was all very real.

 

"Are you sure this is a good idea Jane? I mean do you even know how to fight with this?"

 

"Is this the part where you say 'Dammit Jane, you're a doctor of astrophysics not a superhero.'?"

 

"I'm not joking anymore, look Pepper's done this before and Betty's a badass who spent however many years hiding from military intelligence with Bruce in the world's least popular vacation spots, but we don't do this sort of thing."

 

"We've done it before too Darce."

 

"We got lucky in Greenwich okay? We got really, really lucky. We could have died. And we had Thor. You think this sort of thing is normal because he's your boyfriend, but normal is, is....Ian, it's working in a lab that doesn't build flying armor and going to the pub and playing in Britain's worst band. We're not superheroes Jane."

 

"You were the one saying we should be last night."

 

"I was drunk and I was talking shit. I also said Pepper should dye her hair green and just act completely normal round Tony, and that I should have a threesome with Sam and Steve and none of that's going to happen is it? Look I'm just saying that you don't have to do this, you can leave it to the people who know what they're doing and nobody will think any less of you."

 

Jane bit her lip, looked into her friend's eyes. "I think I can help Darcy. Remember what Thor did to Malekith?"

 

"You mean the bit where he charged into a cloud of cosmic energies that would have ripped a human being apart, then almost had a spaceship drop on his head for his trouble?"

 

"I'll be careful okay? I'll be fine. I've run my calculations for this thing a dozen times, they're perfect." She smiled what was meant to be a reassuring smile and flipped the faceplate down, leaving Darcy staring at an expressionless metal mask. Jane's voice came over the lab speakers.

 

"JARVIS, are any of those things outside this lab at the moment?"

 

"Negative Doctor Foster."

 

"Do you think you could open and close the blast shutters very quickly before one got here?"

 

"Given their present configuration I could give you a window of fourteen seconds."

 

"Do it please."

 

"You do know those windows don't open right?" gulped Darcy. The suit turned to face the window as the shields slid up.

 

"Don't worry, if this works they don't need to. I just want to see where I'm going." And then Jane vanished. There was a moment of stunned silence before Darcy heard her whooping over the comm. She spun to face the window, on the other side of which Jane punched the air and looped the loop before flying away into battle.

 

"You are such a dork Jane." Darcy muttered, and then more quietly "Please don't get hurt." She leaned against the window as the shutters closed again, exhausted even after the magical hangover cure and suddenly aware she that hadn't eaten since the previous night.

 

The lab doors snapped open to reveal a crazed-looking figure wearing only a pair of boxers. "What the fuck is going on?" he shouted.

 

Darcy smiled wearily. "Hi Ian, fancy some breakfast?"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recognize that the properties of uru as I have described them are not quite canon, but given that it is a stupid-ass canon I have elected to ignore it.


	4. Chapter 4

The world strobed across her vision as Jane leapt through the space around the tower, orientated herself, leapt again. It had been confusing at first but Jane adapted quickly, used as she was to processing sometimes overwhelming sensory input. She had learned over the years how to tune out distractions and, after absorbing from Betty and Pepper's conversation that the robots seemed to be adapting, filtered out the babble of the comm. Overlaying what she saw on her mental map of the space as she flickered towards the enemy proved surprisingly easy for a woman used to integrating Asgardian cosmology with thirteen-dimensional space-time.

Jump, orient, jump, orient, jump, orient, jump...

Thor had explained how he had defeated Malekith to her after the battle of Greenwich, and later to the other Avengers with fewer technical details and more poetry (which he claimed, rather unconvincingly, scanned better in Aesir). The essence had been that an unconventional enemy, too powerful to defeat, could sometimes be taken apart into more manageable pieces...

Jump, orient, jump, orient, jump, STRIKE!

Jane materialized above a robot with her hands around the base of a limb and vanished again milliseconds later. She reappeared fifty feet away clutching her prize. The severed tentacle wept sparks as it fell to the ground, but she had already shifted back and seized another two before the robot released what was happening. She dropped the writhing thing hurriedly and was about to attack again when a minor electric shock to her shoulder broke her concentration.

"My apologies Doctor Foster, but you were not responding to my verbal communications." said JARVIS. "I have observed a nanosecond delay in the coordination of the fore and hind limbs, suggesting that the central processing unit is located in the head. It may be more efficient to remove that first."

Jane nodded her thanks, planned her attack, jumped, seized, jumped again. Holding the thing at arm's length to avoid the futile lashing of its steel mandibles, Jane watched as what remained of its body plummeted earthwards. In the moment of calm that followed Jane relaxed enough to allow herself to listen to the comm.

"You are recording this are you JARVIS?" said Pepper. "Because I need to see Tony's face when he sees what Jane's done with his suit."

***

"Let me get this straight." said Ian as the elevator doors slid open (Tony's choice of elevator music having made it very difficult to maintain a conversation) "The tower is being attacked."

"Yup."

"By flying robot spiders with lasers."

"That's right."

"And Jane and Pepper and Betty are out there fighting them at the moment."

"Uh huh."

"And you think the best thing we can do at the moment is to have breakfast."

"Well we're under attack and we're hungry, and we can only do something about one of those, so why not? I've got cinnamon Pop Tarts."

"I'm not hungry." said Ian sullenly. He was now wearing a lab coat over his boxers but he'd left it hanging open. Darcy was trying very hard not to make unfavorable mental comparisons with Thor whenever she glanced at his chest.

As she reached her apartment door it suddenly became very easy to distract herself from such comparisons. A shriek of tortured metal echoed down the corridor, followed by a crash and a second louder  crash as the internal firedoors sealed off their section of the corridor. The lights went out for the second time that morning, came back on a baleful blue.

"A robot's made it through the shields! Eighty...eighty ninth floor, east side!" Pepper's amplified voice resonated in the eerie gloom.

"Isn't that this floor?" gulped Ian.

"Mr Boothby is correct. The robot is currently located on the far side of fire door to your left, between yourselves and the elevator, and is endeavoring to penetrate the barrier as we speak. As it seems probable that its destination is the laboratory, it may be expedient to conceal yourselves in an apartment until it has passed."

Darcy felt an irrational surge of anger at JARVIS's calm voice. Not that she wanted the AI to be panicking but couldn't Tony have programmed him to sound a little more concerned, dammit? Grabbing IAN by his sleeve she dragged him across the corridor into Jane's appartment. A cleaner bot barged past their ankles and started spinning in frantic circles and beeping ecstatically when it saw the size of the mess in the front room.

They leant against the closed door, wide-eyed and panting in the murk. Over the sound of her racing heart Darcy could distantly hear Pepper arranging for her and Betty to guard the breach until the bots could repair it, while Jane circled, checking they weren't getting in anywhere else. IAN turned to her, a pleading look on his face. He seemed to want to say a lot of things but finally settled on "Why are we in Jane's apartment?"

"Weapons. Thor's kind of like those people you see on Hoarders, just with pointy things instead of old clothes and cat hair."

He nodded, told himself that this was a perfectly logical answer in the world he'd found himself in and ventured another question.

"Why are the lights blue?"

"Because Clint wouldn't hear an alarm if he hadn't got his hearing aids in and red emergency lighting would be like just turning the lights off for Steve. It does kind of want to make you start singing 'Under the Sea' though." Or at least it does when there isn't a decent chance you're about to be dismembered by a giant mechanical spider, Darcy added mentally. They turned to the weapons racks, Ian eyeing a broadsword while Darcy considered a pair of wicked-looking curved daggers the length of her forearm.

The broadsword hit the floor with a loud, metallic clang that reverberated through the room. "Ian you idiot!" hissed Darcy. "It must have heard that."

"If I might interject Ms Lewis," said JARVIS smoothly "Prince Thor's quarters are entirely soundproof, as per the unanimous request of the team after Doctor Foster moved in. Sir oversaw the modifications personally."

While he was speaking Ian made an unsuccessful attempt to lift the sword off the floor, discovered he wasn't strong enough to raise the handle more than a few inches, and was now awkwardly pretending he'd never tried.

"This is hopeless Darce, we don't know how to use any of this stuff!" he protested.

Darcy narrowed her eyes as she watched the cleaner bot lift up the broken couch with a deceptively delicate-looking manipulator arm. "Don't worry, I have a plan."

***

Thor ducked under the canvas door of the royal marquee and rubbed his eyes wearily, thanking the Norns that he wouldn't be needed for the drafting of the trade agreement. His brother, with his smooth tongue and brilliant, devious mind had always been the better negotiator and Thor couldn't help feeling he had been the wrong prince to attempt to broker a deal between the stolid, stubborn dwarves and the distrustful elves with their flowery language and serpentine plotting. Not for the first time he wished he'd paid more attention during his lessons in the diplomatic arts, and wondered if there was any way to catch up. Perhaps Pepper, a skilled negotiator who in another realm would have been at least a royal advisor, might be able to offer him some advice?

His musings were interrupted by the sudden opening of the Bifrost on the hill ahead of him. It disgorged a slightly breathless Sif who leapt through a small copse of trees and thrust a leather bag into his hand.

"You are needed on Midgard immediately!" she panted. "The Tower of Stark is under attack and her warriors battle abroad, leaving the Lady Jane and her companions to defend themselves. I shall make your apologies to the assembled party. Go!" she yelled as he stared at her, stupefied, before racing toward the Bifrost.

As he ran he inspected the contents of the bag she had given him. As well as his comms earpiece it contained his StarkPhone and wallet, although it seemed that Sif had simply grabbed anything in his chambers that she thought was Midgardian technology, as a consequence of which he would be going into battle armed with two ballpoint pens, the StarkPod Darcy had given him for the midwinter celebration, half a tin of Kona coffee and a box of coffee filters. He had a brief moment in the golden observatory to fit the earpiece and feel grateful for Sif's friendship before he was once again hurtling through the void between worlds.

He landed with enough force to crater the tarmac and set off every car alarm on Park Avenue, and immediately destroyed two robots with a bolt of lightning. He launched himself into the air in pursuit of another and then stopped, hovering, in amazement at the sight before him.

He recognized the silver suit with the rainbow triangle of course, he'd seen it a thousand times while lurking in Jane's lab, trying to make himself small and having about as much success as he would have done impersonating Natasha. And the person in it could only be Jane. The fluid grace with which she fought though amazed him, the way she flickered in and out of existence too rapidly for the robots to track, now intercepting a missile aimed at Pepper and returning it into the blind spot of the robot that had fired it, now materializing above another and disappearing again with its thorax.  Her fighting style reminded him of no one so much as his brother, though he made a mental note to never, ever tell her this.

He was so enthralled that he didn't see the robot contort itself into firing position beside him, or notice the approaching missile until it connected with the side of his head.

Jane spun in time to see him tumbling unconscious out of the air, Mjolnir falling from his grasp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay guys, life sort of happened


	5. Chapter 5

In an instant Jane materialized beneath him, supporting his weight effortlessly in the suit. Betty was not far behind.

 

"Dammit, support his head, keep his neck steady Jane!"

 

"This doesn't happen! He doesn't get hurt this easily! He's meant to be healing!"

 

Betty mentally switched gears, taking control and hating herself for it as she remembered the first time she saw Bruce fall out of a plane.

 

"Pull yourself together Jane, he needs you to." She nodded at the coffee shop across the street, the shattered window gaping like a jagged would. "Let's get him in there, rest him on a table."

 

"There should be blue light, he's meant to be regenerating. It shouldn't even have hit him!"

 

"Jane, I'm going to do everything I can okay but you need to stay calm. Let me find something sterile to clean this up with."

 

"Boiling water, from the coffee machine."

 

"What?"

 

"Haven't you seen that disgusting thing he does with teabags? Sticks his fingers right in the cup to squeeze them. I keep telling him not to do it when he's making tea for other people but he..." she choked on her words before finishing and Betty wished she could see her face.

 

"Jane, I'll take care of him I promise but you really need to get back out there, you're the only one making a difference. Okay? Go and help Pepper." Jane nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and after taking a moment to compose herself teleported back into the fray. Turning away from the space she'd vacated Betty tore off her gauntlets and visor and focused her helmet flashlight on her patient.

 

His breathing and pulse were slower than she had expected but steady and regular, and Betty reminded herself that for all that he looked like an anatomical diagram of the human musculature she was dealing with an alien.

 

She clawed at the pouch on his belt, hoping for healing stones, and cursed when she discovered that Thor apparently carried a personal supply of coffee with him into battle.

 

Though the power had cut out the coffee maker's boiler still held scalding water - not quite able to believe Jane at first she tested a little on his hand. When that seemed to have no effect she rinsed the blood from his hair and reassured herself that it was all coming from the scalp wound, which was rather smaller than she had expected.

 

She realized she had no idea how to take his armor off but decided she could call Jane about that later - his exposed head and neck were her immediate priority. Gently, taking care not to shift his spine, she felt along the sides of his neck for obvious damage and found none. Cautiously she ran her fingers through his hair, still uncomfortably hot from the water, examining his skull for fractures or swelling. She found the crack radiating out from his head wound above his right ear and her stomach lurched at the size of it.

 

She was tracing its length with her fingers, taking care not to apply pressure, when she felt a bizarre crawling sensation under her fingers as if the bone itself was flexing. It was so utterly unexpected and unlike anything that she'd ever experienced before that she shrieked and jumped back, her fingertips tingling. Cursing herself under her breath (she was glad he was unconscious, she of all people should know better than to treat people like freaks because they were different) she leaned forward again to see the cut on his scalp heal completely; a tentative examination revealed that the bone was knitting as well. Remembering what Jane had said about how Asgardians regenerated she flicked her flashlight beam off. A faint blue glow flickered over his skin, shining brightest over the injured side of his head.

 

"Jane?" she said softly into her headset. "There's blue light now."

 

"Thank the stars!" gasped Jane fervently.

 

Betty sank back onto a nearby leather couch - in a suit it wasn't as comfortable as she'd expected but she was suddenly exhausted. "I'm glad one of us knows what we're doing at least." she said to the empty coffee shop.

 

****

 

A section of the blast door fell in, with a clang and an acrid smell of smoke where the molten edges seared the carpet. Watching from around the corner Ian and Darcy saw the dim light reflect off segmented plates as the construct's head shifted slowly in the gap, perhaps scanning the corridor ahead. It made an odd chittering noise as it did so.

 

Darcy could feel her pulse hammering in her temples. It's suspicious, she thought, this isn't going to work if it won't come through. Without giving herself time for second thoughts she stepped out into the corridor, daggers in hand.

 

"You'll have to get past me first!" she cried, striking what she hoped looked like a threatening pose and hoping her voice didn't shake. Act convincingly, come on. I am Natasha Romanoff, I am Natasha Romanoff. Should she balance on one leg, do some sort of ninja pose? Probably not, falling over would look less than convincing. This would probably have looked better if she wasn't wearing her glasses. This would probably have looked better if she wasn't wearing her Adventure Time slippers.

 

Faster than she had thought possible the thing's head whipped around to face her. (She couldn't think of it as a robot anymore, not after seeing it so close). In a sinuous wave of limbs it flowed through the hole in the blast door... 

 

...And was chopped into pieces by the cleaner bot wielding Thor's axe before it even had a chance to get its laser into position. The bot let out a little warble of mechanical pleasure and started sweeping up the pieces, freely employing the axe on any large enough to be unwieldy. Darcy crumpled to the ground, the knives falling unheeded from her hands.

 

Ian rushed out to her, falling to the floor in front of her as he grasped her shoulders.

 

"What the fuck did you do that for you stupid fucking cow? You could have been killed!"

 

"It wouldn't have come through otherwise." said Darcy in a small shaky voice, and then more forcefully "And don't you DARE talk to me like that, ever." She shoved his hands off her shoulders and stood up, hugging her hands to her chest.

 

Ian battled for control of his emotions, recalling the horrible fear that had rooted him to the spot, convinced was about to see his girlfriend die.

 

"I'm sorry." He said finally. "I shouldn't have shouted at you. You scared me so much though."

 

"I saved your life is what I did." choked Darcy.

 

"I, Darcy, please..." Ian's voice cracked as he stood up and she rushed to him, her shoulders shaking. The shaking escalated into huge, gulping sobs. Ian held her against him as she cried, rubbing her shoulders with one hand. "Darcy I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. I was so scared baby, so scared, I thought you were going to die. But it's okay now, it worked, you were so clever, so brave and so clever."

 

Slowly the sobs subsided. Ian gently released his grip and let her pull away from him. Her face was red and blotchy from crying and the pattern of his labcoat buttons was imprinted on her cheek. He thought she'd never looked braver or lovelier.

 

"Sir, ma'am, I apologize for the interruption but Doctor Ross has asked me to inform you that she and Prince Thor are currently across the road in Caffeine Nation. In light of recent events she suggests that you might be safer the than in the Tower." said JARVIS.

 

Ian nodded. "Come on then, Caffeine Nation. Looks like you can get some breakfast after all."

 

He was rewarded with a shaky laugh.

 

****

 

"It's getting harder Pepper." gasped Jane.

 

"I know."

 

"I can't even get near them when they're moving in a random pattern like this."

 

"I KNOW!"

 

The two women hung helplessly in the air as before them the robots darted and jinked in a dance whose complexity defied prediction. The only silver lining was that they couldn't seem to attack in this formation, but neither woman had managed to take one down since Thor's arrival and equally abrupt departure.

 

"JARVIS?" called Jane, to take her mind off the image of his limp body tumbling toward the ground. "Can you detect any pattern in their movements?"

 

"Negative Doctor Foster, I have run comparisons with over two thousand random number generating algorithms with no matches. They appear to be exhibiting true randomness. Ms Potts may also wish to know that Justin Hammer is attempting to reach her again."

 

"Oh for f... JARVIS, did I hear SHIELD had recovered some sort of Centipede technology that allows you to send electric shocks over the phone?"

 

"Unfortunately Ms Potts that technology requires the recipient of the shocks to be using a specially modified cellphone. Shall I block his calls?"

 

"No, you may as well put him through, it's not like today can get any worse."

 

"Pepp..."

 

"What is it this time, MR Hammer?"

 

"I couldn't help noticing that you still seem to be experiencing a little difficulty Pepper. I have my drones primed and ready to help you out whenever you need, just say the word."

 

"Thank you, but as I said earlier we will not be requiring your assistance and I certainly don't want to see your malfunctioning drones anywhere near my tower. Let's face it, Stark industries is a better weapons manufacturer than you and we don't even make weapons anymore. JARVIS, end call."

 

"What's that asshole doing here anyway? I thought he was in jail." Betty's voice cracked in their helmets.

 

"He's white, well connected and almost as rich as Tony. He was in jail for all of three weeks." sighed Pepper.

 

"I can't stand that slimy little shit." muttered Betty.

 

"Did you and Bruce have a run in with him? I didn't think he had much expertise in biologicals." Pepper considered. "Not that he has much expertise in anything, but he always favored the hardware side of things."

 

"Not directly, but we heard a lot of stories. Illegal weapons tests in Angola, the DRC, Afghanistan, places a few extra bodies wouldn't raise too much comment. Nothing that could be traced back to him directly of course, but the pieces fit together."

 

Jane couldn't contain herself any longer. "How's Thor?"

 

"No change. Still asleep, still...kinda glowing."

 

"Thank you." said Jane, with an intensity that made Betty wish she'd been able to do more.

 

****

The noise struck Darcy like a solid force as they barreled through the doors of the tower - sirens and explosions and the banshee wail of car alarms. Ian shouted something that sounded like a question at her and she pointed across the street at the coffee shop. One of windows was cracked and its usually warmly lit interior looked dark and somehow sinister. Was it really only last Sunday that she'd been relaxing there, choking on her mocha at Natasha's impressions of Steve's awkward dating attempts?

 

Glass shards shifted under their feet with a slippery crunch as they picked their way across the road between abandoned cars, Ian in his sneakers quickly gaining on Darcy in her slippers. As the gap between them grew she stumbled and slid down the side of the car beside her, just in time to see a bus come spinning through the air towards Ian.

 

The cacophony drowned out her warning shout. Oblivious to the pain of a thousand glass slivers biting into her bare soles she charged Ian, knocking him bodily out of the bus's path, sprawling into it herself.

 

As she looked up Darcy knew with absolute certainty that she was about to die. And as she realized this everything suddenly became very vivid - the look on Ian's face as he turned and realized what was about to happen, the glint of sunlight on metal as fifteen tons of death spun through the air towards her - and perhaps time slowed or perhaps her thoughts accelerated because she was suddenly conscious of thinking a thousand things at once. She was glad Jane had Thor now to make sure she ate and slept, and she hoped they wouldn't be too sad about her, especially after everyone Thor had already lost.

 

Sure she had regrets - she would miss meeting her new niece and the season finale of Orange Is The New Black, and she should really have bought those boots dammit, it wasn't like she was going to spend the money she'd saved now, but Darcy realized she didn't regret how it would end. Ian could be whiny and irritating and laughed at his own jokes and still thought Britpop was cool and talked over the TV but fundamentally he was a good person and Darcy was glad he was going to live. And if for that to happen it had to mean no more Darcy Lewis, well so be it.

 

And even as she accepted this some detached part of her mind was amused to note that her body refused to, that her hand was closing on an object behind her, as if she had a hope of fending the falling bus off with a stick or whatever it was.

 

Then came a shuddering crash that shook nearby buildings to their foundations.

 

Then silence.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I may have written the least sexy description of Chris Hemsworth's body ever committed to fanfic there. I'm so terribly sorry.


	6. Chapter 6

Betty stalked the aisles of the coffee shop irritably, feeling useless. The occasional crash still came from outside and the car alarms continued their wailing, but from the fragments of conversation she could hear over the comm the battle seemed to be at a standstill and she couldn't help feeling that one extra person could maybe turn the tide. It would have been different if she'd felt she was able to do anything helpful for Thor, but all she could do was watch the faint blue light flickering around his temple...

 

She realized with a start that the light had gone out.

 

In an instant she was by Thor's side, just as his eyes snapped open. He raised his hand. Betty immediately triggered the boot repulsors and leapt, landing awkwardly with her waist across his forearm.

 

"If you summon the hammer in here you'll bring the building down on top of us!"

 

"Jane? The battle?"

 

"Everyone's fine, we're at a stalemate at the moment." She scrambled gracelessly off him. "Can you tell me what your name is?"

 

"Do you not know? Have you been injured Betty?"

 

"No, no, I need you to tell me your name so I can tell if you have a head injury."

 

Thor looked intrigued. "Is this some Midgardian sympathetic magic? How will saying my name allow you to sense injuries?"

 

"Just, please Thor. Damn. Look please just tell me your name."

 

"Thor."

 

"Thank you. Do you know where you are?"

 

"Yes."

 

"I mean where are you?"

 

"Midgard."

 

"More specifically?"

 

Thor looked around him. "Is this the cafe beneath the tower? The one that has the pastries with cinnamon?"

 

"Yes. Okay, do you know what happened to you, how you got hurt?"

 

"I do."

 

"Thor, this is the last question then I'll stop asking but to be sure you're okay I need you to tell me how you got injured." Betty chided herself for starting to think of him as a nightmare patient, reminded herself that the worst patients to have were the ones that didn't get better.

 

Thor looked down at the ground, radiating embarrassment. "Some manner of projectile struck my head. I was not prepared, and I did not dodge it nor did I intercept it because I was...distracted."

 

"Distracted?" Betty thought back to where Thor had been when he was hit, where he had been looking, and suddenly had to suppress a smile. "You were looking at Jane weren't you? Thor, was that the Asgardian equivalent of opening a door in your own face because you saw someone attractive?"

 

"The analogy is...not entirely inaccurate." Thor started to raise his hand again, causing Betty to hurriedly grab his wrist.

 

"I just wanted to push my hair out of my eyes!"

 

"Oh." Betty let go of his wrist and he adjusted his hair, watching her warily the whole time.

 

"Thank you for taking care of me." he said when he was finally sure she wasn't going to jump on him again.

 

"Don't mention it, I pretty much just poured boiling water on your face and left you to take a nap. You're not going to get away with avoiding the medical floor anymore though. Now we know this can happen we need to know how to treat you if it happens again."

 

Thor ran his hand through his hair, looking sheepish and incidentally undoing all the tidying he'd done earlier. "I can assure you I will not allow it to happen again."

 

They were interrupted by the appearance of a wild-haired figure dressed only in shoes, boxers and a stained lab coat in the cafe window. It took a few moments for Betty to recognize Ian, who pointed a finger at Thor, gasped "You!" and broke into the sort of laughter that was one degree away from tears.

 

"Come and sit down Ian, and drink something with a bit of sugar in it, you'll feel better." Betty guided him to the couch and fetched him a Coke out of the smashed chiller unit, figuring Tony would be paying for the damage anyway. She found a uniform fleece behind the counter too and brought it back to wrap round his hunched shoulders, mouthing "What have you done?" to Thor over his head. Thor shrugged helplessly and looked back at her with the bewildered expression of a man who, prior to being unconscious, had spent the past few days negotiating trade agreements with a federation of Dwarven clans whose complex network of familial obligations he'd only half managed to understand with the help of three advisors and on one occasion a crude runic summary scrawled on the inside of his forearm.

 

"I can't cope with this. I can't date a superhero." said Ian, and burst into tears.

 

"Why would you have to... Is Darcy hurt?" demanded Thor, grabbing Ian's shoulders. Whatever seesaw his sanity was teetering on tipped the other way into hysterical laughter.

 

"No, no, of course not, she's having the time of her life!"

 

"Are you hurt Ian? Ian?" Betty pushed Thor out of the way and was slightly surprised when he let her. "I need you to look at me and we're going to take some deep breaths together okay? One...two...three...good...five. Okay now Ian, can you tell me what happened to you? Are you hurt? Did something hit you?"

 

"No, I fell." said Ian, holding out his palms which were grazed raw.

 

"And you didn't hit your head at all?"

 

"No."

 

"And where is Darcy?" demanded Thor, no longer able to contain himself. Ian gestured to the street outside the shattered window and looked dangerously close to laughing, crying or doing both at the same time again.

 

"Okay Ian, deep breaths remember? Thor's going to go and find Darcy" (the warrior was already disappearing through the window) "and I'm going to clean this up for you, okay?" Betty took his hands gently, almost relieved to have something that simple to deal with.

 

***

Hovering in mid air Jane saw an enormous bolt of lightning strike from a clear sky, and moments later a bus came flying down the street. Her eyes prickled and she felt something hard and tight in her chest unclench. "Thor?" she called softly over the comm. There was no reply but that didn't surprise her - to his ongoing frustration Tony had so far been unable to design an earpiece that would function reliably after a three million volt lightning strike. What she'd seen had been reassurance enough. Suddenly feeling so much lighter she leapt to attack the nearest robot.

 

In her elation she chose vector with less care than usual though, and a second, unnoticed robot slammed into her side as she materialized, knocking her to the ground. The arm of the suit hit the asphalt with a force that knocked the breath from her and fogged her vision with dancing orange lights. As her sight cleared Jane saw to her horror that the robots were alighting around her. Scrabbling she tried to right herself with only one working arm, but one of the constructs leapt onto her, pinning her in place. With a metallic screech it reared to strike the killing blow...

 

...and a resounding impact from Mjolnir sent it hurtling off her in pieces. The hammer arced back, knocking down the other robots surrounding her like skittles, before sailing back to its master behind her. Stunned but smiling Jane took her time righting herself - her arm didn't seem to be hurt but the impact had somehow fused the joints of the suit - and turned to see...

 

"Darcy?!?"

 

"Believe me boss lady, I'm just as surprised as you are."

 

Her assistant stood grinning on the top of a car, holding Thor's hammer in one hand without apparent effort. The effect was made more bizarre by the fact that she was barefoot and wearing sweat pants.

 

"What?? How?"

 

"I was about to get squished so Thor lent me Mew Mew. I didn't get the armor though, which is a shame, I think I'd rock a cape."

 

Jane was jolted out of her shock by the sight of a looming shadow behind her friend. "Behind you!" she gasped. Darcy spun, whirling the hammer from hand to hand, and took out both of the robots converging on her with ease.

 

"I've never seen Thor do it like that before!"

 

"Baton squad in Junior High. You never forget the knack. Are you okay?"

 

"A bit stunned is all, it's the suit that's damaged not me."

 

"Are you sure?"

 

"I'm fine Darcy, go and help Pepper."

 

"Is that Pepper?"

 

"Betty's in the mark 7.2, Pepper's in the 7.4."

 

Darcy squinted at the red and gold suit, to her eyes identical to the other on she'd seen soaring above her earlier. "And I say again, is that Pepper?"

 

"Up there!" Jane tried to point, realized she couldn't and tried again with her left arm.

 

"On it boss." Darcy grinned and ran, leaping parked cars with ease. Jane could only stare with her mouth hanging open.

 

"Verily I never expected to witness such a spectacle!"

 

Jane spun round again and swept Thor into an awkward one-handed hug that almost crushed the breath out of him. "I was so worried about you!"

 

"Please Jane, in the suit..." she released him. "Thank you. Your arm, you are hurt?"

 

"No, it's just the armor, I, shit, I can't get the damn helmet off to kiss you."

 

Thor narrowed his eyes as a blocky drone swooped overhead. "Perhaps we should save that for a later moment. I fear our foes have called in reinforcements."

 

Jane nodded grimly. "You're probably right, those are Hammer's drones."

 

 


End file.
